Xmas Light Wars

Untill this Xmas, my small exterior Xmas lights display has been the pride of the street, consisting of no more than a few ropes light, put up in a big tree growing outside my house.

That was untill without warning, a neighbour produced a Xmas light display based on a Xmas tree shape frame, with about 5 sets of flashing xmas lights, measuring some 3 metres high and 2 metres wide, the bugger spoilt my Xmas.

This has meant that I now have no choice but to produce something bigger and better. I am starting early, so that I can get things right and not take up all my time in one go.

I managed to buy on Ebay from Hong Kong 10 sets, for £5 a set, some LED based light strings consisting of alternative blue then white LED's, run by a 4 channel light controller. They are 5 metres long and consist of 50 white and 50 blue LED's. The controller supplied with them, does quite a nice job of running things, but I want to create something that my neighbour will not be able to compete with (I hope).

My idea is to run down from the apex of the roof, hanging over the gutter and down the front of the house, the 10 sets of lights, evenly spaced along the house. I want to run them from my own design of PIC controlled light controller. I do not want to rewire the 1000 leds I have, so will compromise on only having full control of the individual light strings in the horizontal axis, and only having control of the 4 channels in the vertical axis. this of course equates to 40 channels of light control. I can handle the design on the PIC side, but just want to check with you all that I have the theory right on how the LED's are driven.

The controller which came with the lights, consists of a bridge rectifier, no transformer, 4 thyristors, some sort of dedicated MPU board which has an encapsulated IC of some sort, a simple resistor/capacitor power supply for the MPU, a resistor/button going into the MPU (to change the patterns) and thats all. No current limiting that I can see, nor voltage regulation. On checking the LED strings, they consist of 4 lots of 25 LED's wired in series. Nearly every LED in the first 2 metres have a tiny 3K resistor wired into one of the legs, the last 8 metres are directly wired. Thats 18K of resistance in each of the 4 channels.

Do you think it is safe to switch each of the channels with Thyristors directly with mains power or is their some deep dark mysterious driving taking place, within the MPU?

I have some 64 pin PIC's I have used in the past, which I could use to simplify the PIC coding/circuitry, Or do you have any suggestions on how to drive 40 thyristors differently with a smaller PIC? Obviousley component cost is an issue.

Mad Mark in Spain

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Don't forget to include some code to alert the local Fire Dept.

Reply to
ED

Bullshit.

You need to examine what it is in you that impels you to be the bigger asshole.

Good Luck! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

Just be glad you are not on the same street!

If the OP built a dot addressable RGB + white matrix of hanging strings of lightsat a much closer spacing (like every couple of inches) he could start off with icicle effects and maybe a few simple apparently hardwired animations, then just when the neighbour has worked their butt off improving their display, change to the full motion video effects. . . .

There is a street a few mile away that competes in this fashion. They collect for local charities including a children's hospice from those that drive by to view the overall display, which I suppose mitigates the annoyance somewhat, but I wouldn't like to live there.

(Un)fortunately the OP's current setup is going be so limited by the existing connections that it will be hard to exhibit worse taste than the light strings already display. As I am a whole ocean away I will play devil's advocate and whisper "Sound to light effects . . . ."

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Ian Malcolm.   London, ENGLAND.  (NEWSGROUP REPLY PREFERRED)
ianm[at]the[dash]malcolms[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk
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Reply to
IanM

Many already do that, though they use low-power FM transmitters.

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krw

Anti-Spam wrote in news:p1k7k6lgdoplb4p6365qd43ioi87ppit3h@

4ax.com:

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I see Spain has some catching up to do......(c;]

Reply to
Fred

You'll have to go some way to beat this:

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Dirk

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Dirk Bruere at NeoPax

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote in news:8qmhj0FmsU2 @mid.individual.net:

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LEDs have lowered the load on the grid.... I like this one better. LEDs let you scan the colors bulbs can't match.

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49,000 LEDs on 112 channels.

That was in Jan, 2008. By December:

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He had expanded it to 61,300 LEDs but it doesn't say how many more channels.

This has to be close to the most complex programming and implementation. Watch the colors shift across the system. There's some serious scanning going on! It's an amazing show. They'll all be running LED Jumbotrons like Times Square walls are made of in the future....

Imagine you bedroom window points to his house.....hee hee.....

Reply to
Fred

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